Lo que habremos hecho
by Congragulation
Summary: Armin has tried everything short of flat-out asking to blow him in the middle of Mrs. Valdez's second period class.


Spanish class is difficult for Armin. Not because the language doesn't come easily to him. Armin Arlert loves Spanish, speaks it all he can. He wants to become fluent, maybe live in Argentina for a few years. The class is easy. It's the classmates that make it difficult. One classmate in particular, actually. Jean Kirschtein is ruining Armin Arlert's favorite class, because Jean Kirschtein is a fucking idiot.

Jean's not bad at Spanish. Not as good as Armin is, but definitely better than most of the class. So, every time there's a group project, a skit, some partnered-off busywork, the two of them work together. It's convenient for Jean. It's torture for Armin. This is primarily because Armin Arlert has had the world's biggest crush on Jean since the 6th grade, and Jean seems to be determinedly ignorant of this fact. Armin has tried everything short of flat-out asking to blow him in the middle of Mrs. Valdez's second period class. He even asked Jean on a movie date once. When he got there, he thanked Armin profusely for offering to buy both of their tickets and then asked where everyone else was.

After a while, Armin just sort of gave up. He'd had enough of nervously letting his knee fall against Jean's under the desk, only to have Jean blushingly remove it and apologize. Enough of texting under the pretense of homework questions, just to find out more about Jean's day. Enough of leaving anonymous notes in Jean's locker (Armin knew Jean kept them, every single one, in a neat rubber-banded stack in the back of his math binder, he'd seen it).

Armin is past all this, to the point where he's not sure if he just wants to drop it and quit trying. Or maybe he really should offer to blow Jean in class. Maybe then it wouldn't fly right over his head.

"Hey, Jean?" Armin slides his textbook to the side and turns to face Jean. The rest of the class has been partnered off for a group exercise on future perfect tense conjugation, and Armin figured that over the noise of verb repetition, nobody would hear them.

"Yeah, Armin?" Jean asks. God, Armin is just constantly astounded at how much Jean has changed since sixth grade. When Armin first fell in love with him, Jean had slightly more acne than the average 11 year old, slightly bigger braces, and an absolutely ghastly haircut. He was also kind, and funny, and always offered Armin a piece of gum after lunch. And his smile, even with all of the metal, still managed to make Armin's heart stutter.

"You were gonna ask me something?" Jean smiles again now after Armin's apparently lengthy silence, and Armin crosses his arms to covertly pinch the inside of his bicep to stop his heart from fluttering.

"We're friends, right?" Armin begins more steadily than he'd thought he would. He hadn't exactly prepared a speech, but he had gone through about twelve different versions of this conversation this week.

Jean's head cocks to the side slightly and gives another, softer smile that makes Armin feel slightly sick to his stomach.

"Of course we're friends, Armin." Jean laughs slightly, as if Armin had been silly to ask, and Armin suddenly becomes more conscious of his breathing pattern. "Why?"

"No reason." Armin turns back to the blank piece of paper in his binder and poises to write something, ignoring the fact that the rest of the class is still doing the conjugation exercise. He wouldn't be able to do the exercise now, anyways, because he's too busy thinking about how dumb he was, he wasn't supposed to let the conversation end, he was supposed to introduce the idea of them possibly being more than friends to Jean, let him know that Armin was totally open to the idea, ask if Jean was maybe open to the idea of letting Armin suck his dick.

"It would be cool if we could just suck each other's dicks sometimes, huh, Jean?" Nope, no, that was definitely not what he'd been planning on saying. Why, oh why did that come out of his mouth. Where had that thought even come from?

Jean is silent for a second. Armin stares at him, trying not to let on exactly how mortified he is. Just as Armin is about to intercede, let Jean know it was a big joke, silly Armin, doesn't know when to draw the line, Jean chuckles lightly and nods. Armin's eyebrows shoot into the air.

"Yeah, that would be great, wouldn't it? It's too bad you're not into guys, Arlert. We'd make a cute couple." Jean flips half-heartedly through his notecards as he speaks, moving through them too fast to actually be reading anything.

Holy shit. Armin can't stop staring at Jean, at the slight curve of his mouth, at his too-thin eyebrows (they'd been thicker in middle school, Armin's bet was on tweezing), at the sideburns Armin knew had taken a full year to cultivate.

Armin's heart probably stopped pumping blood a while ago, and his left foot is definitely asleep right now, but Armin's being moved by a force greater than his vital organs at the moment. He can't stop himself from asking.

"Are _you_ into guys?" Armin asks, his casual voice cracking only slightly at end of the upturned phrase.

"Well, yeah. Sometimes. I do love girls, though. You know what it's like, you're straight. Can't believe you used to date Mikasa, to be honest." Jean sounds almost casual about it, as if he has conversations like this every day. Armin mostly just can't believe he actually thought that this idiot he'd fallen in love with had an ounce of cognition.

"I never dated Mikasa," Armin says, disbelieving. Gone from his mind is this image of this unattainable, pristine, new Jean Kirschtein. He's back to middle school Jean Kirschtein, braces glinting and chess club t-shirt starched and clean, and an absolutely glaringly deficient knowledge of how to speak to people he liked.

Jean's mouth (braces-free) falls open slightly, and he gives Armin an absolutely befuddled look.

"Then who did you date last fall? You said you were dating someone and I saw you at the movies with Mikasa, like, a week later. I was so jealous." Jean's eyes are wide open, as if this is a mind-boggling revelation.

"Mikasa is one of my best friends?" Armin presents it like a question. He's speaking slowly and clearly, now. He doesn't want to risk Jean misunderstanding even more. "She was probably giving me a ride or something. I dated Connie last fall, only for a few months. You really thought I was dating Mikasa?"

"Yeah, this whole time, God. And Connie who? I don't think I've met her."

"Him," Armin corrects.

"Him?" Jean asks.

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

They're quiet. After only a moment, the teacher calls out to end the exercise, and the class quiets down, and Jean and Armin lose their opportunity to speak to one another. As he listens to Mrs. Valdez explaining the homework assignment, Armin feels a tap against his shoulder and hears a soft cough from Jean's direction. Armin takes the note that's prodding his arm and opens it gently, so carefully.

_so you ARE into guys?_

The note is written in Jean's usual chicken scratch, and Armin stares at it, pencil unmoving before he finally thinks of what to reply.

_Yeah. And you're really into Mikasa?_

He folds the note back in half and hands it as subtly as possible back to Jean. When Jean reads it, Armin can see Jean glancing to look at him out of the corner of his eye, but Armin's working double time to try and write down the assignment with hands he has willed not to shake. Finally, the note is shoved back onto his desk hastily by Jean, who now lacks all subtlety, apparently.

_?_

Hadn't that been what Jean had said earlier?

_You said you were jealous of me when you thought I was dating Mikasa. _

Armin scribbles the note out quickly, filling in the last of the empty space on the small scrap of paper. He glances at the clock. The period will end soon, and they'll be free to talk and Armin is so afraid he is just going to leave. He shoves the note in Jean's direction, not bothering to fold it this time.

Jean passes back a clean piece of paper, folded neatly in half. Armin opens it.

_Not jealous of you. Jealous of her._

"Oh," Armin whispers.

"Yeah, oh." Armin can hear the smile in Jean's quiet voice.


End file.
